No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
The thing about the value of gold in a society is that it is only valued within the society. If society collapses, there will be no group or entity that could value it. You'd need to wait until people start rebuilding. But then you'd need to be in a position to shape how currency is decided on and minted. Unless you've kept your load of gold secret, it'll be hard to convince people to adopt gold as a currency without starting on more even ground.
Ever since we found gold we have valued it. I don't understand the position of, "Oh, no one will value it!" We love the shit and it's a store of value. How much value is dependent.
You can't eat gold, and you can only trade gold for food if that person can trade the gold for something else. I'm not going to say there's no chance of gold being valuable in a societal collapse scenario, but I'd rather wager with resources than a pretty, shiny metal. I don't see how that's a position that can't be understood. Gold works as an intermediary exchange, but direct barter can always be counted on.
Gold is good as notation for big things, like an excavator and a dozen barrels of diesel. You can’t trade that shit for cucumbers and canned tuna.
You can use gold as an excellent long lasting conductor for electric equipment. You can make it very thin. It would make a comeback in basic dentistry, as you can actually eat it: it’s non-poisonous. Doesn’t tarnish. A smith can do a lot with gold.
Gold is a resource. That said, I don’t have any right now. Just some silver coins, and some packaged goods like knives and flour mills (business leftovers). Given the market insecurities now and gold’s all time high price, wish I did.
Yeah, I know. I have what many would consider an absurd amount of rice and beans and salt so it makes sense to store something that won't go bad. Gold never spoils. Never.
Because it was found by people in society. It was given value within an established society. I'm not saying no one will value it. I'm saying that until there is an established society, it won't hold value. Then if you do end up in a society, you need to sway them to adopt gold as a currency while keeping your gold stores secret.
I disagree. look at the failed states right now. USD and precious metals are the most valued means of trade.
Idk man... Humans like shiney baubles. Remember: Gold was a valuable commodity before we even had legit uses for it beyond decoration.
Because it was found by people in society. It was given value within an established society. I'm not saying no one will value it. I'm saying that until there is an established society, it won't hold value. Then if you do end up in a society, you need to sway them to adopt gold as a currency while keeping your gold stores secret.
It can be used for barter, gold had enough of a reputation that you can get anyone to trade you for it if they have an excess of something.
To clarify, when people colloquially refer to “the collapse of society” they don’t mean that all forms of society would cease to exist, but refer to the failure of the nation state, or possibly the international order, and the long supply chains that go with it. Etc.
So society at various scales would still exist, in overlapping ways and jurisdictions. Basic units like neighbourhoods and firefighters and towns and regions would be organizing based on the old rules and adapting. People organize well in the absence of warlords, so that and extinction events are the threats to trade.
The value of trade goods might be indeterminate if a comet wipes nearly all of us out. Otherwise, many people love to dicker and argue about the value of things, so I’m pretty confident about rare raw materials like gold having both utility value and a reasonably inflated exchange value in a prolonged regional or international crisis.
Compare gold to the other elements on the periodic table as a medium to store value and you'll see why it is used for this task.
It is non toxic, it can be easily held and transported, it is non reactive (it won't rust or combust), it is relatively rare, it is dense (a lot of gold fills a small space) and, well like others have said, it's shiny. It can be easily moulded and forgotten about for millennia and still be the same way it was last used (look at Viking hordes as an example) few other things can do this, maybe diamonds? But they can not be recombined again like gold